My cats are a big part of my waking life, so I guess it makes sense that they appear in many of my dreams. My beautiful Ghost Cat and her fluffy sidekick Specter star in many nighttime adventures in my head. Some of the dreams are scary, while others are hilarious. I’m not the kind of person who sleeps with a dream diary beside my bed, so I’m sad to say that some of my cat-themed dreams drift away from my memory in the dark — but a few have been so vivid that I will never be able to forget them. Now comes dream interpretation: I’m just trying to figure out what they mean.
Cats are a complicated dream symbol, because they can mean so many different things, and according to DreamMoods.com, those meanings depend on if the dreamer is a cat lover or not. For cat people, cats can symbolize an independent spirit, creativity, and power. I think my Ghost Cat just symbolizes herself.
My most intense cat dream started out as a nightmare, but had a happy ending. It began with one of my worst fears — Ghost Cat had gotten out of the house and was lost.
Dream me was inconsolable, running around the neighborhood looking for my poor little Ghosty. My heart was pounding and I was fearing the worst when I finally saw her emerge from a wooded area. My relief didn’t last for long, though, because a big wolf was in hot pursuit, bursting out of the bushes and chasing after Ghost Cat.
I remember being so terrified and in that horrible dream state where you can’t move your body no matter how hard you try. I wanted to run to Ghosty and save her, but I physically couldn’t.
Luckily for me, Ghost Cat wasn’t going down without a fight. When the wolf caught up to her and snapped at her tail, Ghost Cat turned around and began unleashing her inner beast on the much larger animal.
She trashed, showed her mean teeth, and clawed at the wolf until it turned and ran back into the bushes, blood dripping from its face. Ghost Cat ran to me and leap up onto my shoulders, freeing me from my frozen state. That’s when I woke up, heart pounding.
This is such a weird dream, and it was so much more vivid that my regular dreams. I have to wonder what it could mean. According to DreamMoods.com, seeing a wolf in a dream can be a symbol of survival, beauty, solitude, mystery, self-confidence, and pride. Ghosty certainly is a survivor (she did time in a shelter after all), and she is a self-confident beauty. On the other hand, she and my younger cat, Speck, are pretty much attached at the hip, so I’m not sure where solitude comes into play.
The site also said that fighting a black wolf in a dream means the dreamer is suppressing something and is in deep denial. I wonder, though, because I wasn’t the one fighting the wolf, does that mean Ghost Cat is in denial about something? Or does the dream mean that I am in denial about Ghost Cat’s desire to go outside, and I am suppressing her by keeping her indoors? The wolf dream was definitely a vivid one, and it’s obviously one I have yet to figure out.
Another of my most vivid kitty-themed dreams involves Ghost Cat making me a coffee. In the dream I woke up and walked from my bedroom into the kitchen, where I saw Ghost Cat sitting on the counter waiting for me to give her chin rubs. I complied with her non-verbal request, and then turned away from her to fill the kettle for my morning coffee. When I turned back to Ghosty, I was surprised to see her filling my coffee grinder with beans. She pressed the grinder’s lid with her paw, and then poured the grounds into my french press. It was weird, though, that in the dream, I didn’t react as though I was surprised by any of this. Instead, I just turned away from Ghost Cat and opened the cupboard to grab a mug — and that’s when my kitchen morphed into a coffee shop.
Ghost Cat was still making coffee, but now she was doing it professionally. She was wearing a little apron and everything, and I was in the middle of a line full of people waiting for lattes. When I got to the front of the line to place my order, I woke up. The craziness of the dream made me laugh to myself in the dark before drifting back to sleep.
What could this coffee shop dream mean? According to DreamMoods.com, dreaming that you need coffee means you need to gain insight before making a decision. It also said that dreaming about a coffee shop means it’s time to catch up with old friends. I suppose either of those interpretations could be true.
My very favorite cat dream stars both Ghost Cat and Specter, but this dream doesn’t require any interpretation because I know exactly how it came to be in my mind. I was laying on the couch, listening to a sleep hypnosis video on YouTube, and Ghost Cat and Specter had claimed cuddle spots on my legs. When the hypnotist started describing how I was walking along a tropical beach, my mind naturally brought Ghosty and Speck along to the oceanfront paradise. My kitties walked beside me through the palm trees until we found a hammock on the beach and went to sleep.
I can credit the YouTube hypnotist for our tropical vacation, but it’s hard to decipher how those other dreams got into my subconscious brain. In the end, I’m just glad that I get to keep my kitties with me in my dreams, even if Ghost Cat does get up to hijinks in my head.
What kind of cat dreams do you have? Tell us in the comments!
Read more about cats and dreams:
- Do Your Cats Ever Show Up in YourDreams?
- Do Cats Dream — And If So, What Do They Dream About?
- 5 Facts About Cats and Sleep
About the author: Heather Marcoux is a freelance writer in Alberta, Canada. Her beloved Ghost Cat was once her only animal, but Specter the kitten,GhostBuster the Lab and her newest dog, Marshmallow, make her fur family complete. Heather is also a wife, a bad cook and a former TV journalist. Some of her friends have hidden her feed because of an excess of cat pictures. If you don’t mind cat pictures, you can follow her on Twitter; she also posts pet GIFs on Google +
